


historical value, familial value

by untrustworthyglitch



Series: blind!klaus (hazy, but hopeful) [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben Gets Corporeal, Blind Character, Family, Family Bonding, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Road Trips, Vacation, Washington D.C.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 07:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19080418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untrustworthyglitch/pseuds/untrustworthyglitch
Summary: The words "family road trip" leave Luther's lips, and the other six verbally riot.The ensuing three days are nothing but chaos.





	historical value, familial value

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the third installment of the hazy but hopeful series!!!
> 
> 1.) i am not blind. i have moderate/severe (i've been told different things by different doctors, go figure) vision loss, but i can wear prescription lenses that get me fairly close to 20/20 vision, so i really am not coming from a place of personal knowledge when i write these fics. i do my research, but i'm human, and it's entirely possible that i've done something offensive. if so, please please please let me know, so i can fix it and apologize immediately and learn from it.  
> 2.) i haven't been to DC in literally like seven years, who knows if this is accurate, i did my best  
> 3.) for fic purposes we're assuming the show takes place somewhere withing driving distance of DC i guess
> 
> enjoy!!!!

The words “family field trip” leave Luther’s lips, and the other six verbally riot.

Diego says, “Actually, I’m busy that day,” despite the fact that Luther never specified a specific timeframe.

“Sounds hectic,” Allison muses, not looking up from shoving a few asparagus tips around her plate.

“Why?” Klaus asks.

“No,” Five says firmly. 

“I don’t get a vote, do I?” Ben asks, glum, despite the fact that only Klaus can hear him. 

“I have rehearsal, actually,” Vanya hedges.

Luther heaves a sigh and leans back in his chair. They’re all clustered around the kitchen table, remnants of dinner sitting on expensive china plates before them, glasses of their father’s good wine half empty. Klaus can imagine the epic eye roll Luther is executing. The tone of his voice conveys it perfectly, but Luther tips his head back dramatically in a movement that, several months ago, would have been entirely too dramatic for the most uptight of the siblings. Now, those kind of exaggerated movements are commonplace in the Hargreeves household. It’s all for Klaus’s benefit, and that fact warms the cockles of his damaged little heart. 

“C’mon guys,” Luther implores. “We never go out as a family.”

“Wonder why?” Klaus hums. They all know why. They’re dysfunctional and eye-catching. Allison is famous and Klaus talks to the air and Luther is fucking  _ humongous. _ They can’t really go anywhere without drawing a lot of unwelcome attention.

“It might be fun to try,” Allison says. She sounds contemplative. 

“I think it would be fun to hang out, with all seven of us,” Vanya adds quietly. She never used to speak up like this when it was Family Meeting Time, and Klaus doesn’t miss the way Allison places a gentle hand on her sister’s shoulder. They’re all glad Vanya is a part of the family, especially now that they’re all going to therapy to try and work through the shit their dad put them through as kids. It’s a long road to healing, but they’re all crammed into a family road trip van and they’re not making pit stops along the way. Which is one hell of a metaphor, and could very easily be the reality, if Luther gets his way.

“Vanya’s right,” Klaus decides. He loves a bit of chaos, and a family field trip is probably the chaotic event of the century. 

“And where do you propose we go?” Five asks. Like Klaus, he is drinking apple juice, and he gesticulates with the glass in hand as he talks. “We’re conspicuous. We stand out. We’d be noticed anywhere.”

“I dunno,” Luther says. It sounds like he didn’t think he would get this far. “Where do normal families go on trips?”

“Amusement park?” Klaus suggests.

“I can’t fit on rides,” Luther says.

“Art museum?” Allison offers.

“Yeah, sure, Allison, let me just pay money to go look at art I can’t see,” Klaus says mockingly. There’s no real venom in his voice and he hopes she knows he’s kidding. For a brief moment he’s vaguely worried that he’d upset her, but then she gives an incredulous laugh, and he knows it’s okay. 

“History museum?” Five says with relish. “We wouldn’t need a tour guide. I’ve been to most of the major events in history.”

“We could road trip to DC,” Diego offers. The room goes quiet for the first time in a long time. Klaus thinks it over. He’s never been, and sure, it would probably be boring and full of weird history shit, but he loves a big city, and a family road trip would be just the dose of excitement he’s been craving since everything settled down. The silence implies that everyone else would like to agree, after a suitable period of quiet reflection and contemplation.

Decision making, in their family, is a process. Step one is contemplative silence. Step two involves everyone in the family casually hedging their bets and implying that maybe, just maybe, they could be persuaded to go along with the original statement. 

“The Air and Space Museum would be cool,” Luther says eventually.

“I’ve been there a few times, but I’d like to see Ford’s Theatre again,” Vanya says slowly.

“And the Capitol Building has some gorgeous paintings,” Allison adds.

“We could see Arlington,” Diego suggests.

“I can walk you through the history museums and tell you all the things the history books got wrong,” Five says with relish.

“What the hell,” Ben mutters. “I’m in.”

“Ben and me are in!” Klaus says, and just like that, the decision is made. They bicker back and forth as a family for a bit, but eventually, a date is set and a tentative itinerary is scribbled onto the back of a napkin. The general plan is to pack up on Monday morning, cram into their freshly bought family van, and hit the road. They’ll spend three days meandering around the city, seeing what they want to see, and at the end of their third day they’ll re-cram themselves into the van and trek home. It sounds simple, so of course it’ll be anything but.   
  
  


Monday morning rolls around quicker than anyone thought, and by nine o’clock in the morning, they’re an hour behind schedule and not a single person is ready to roll. 

“I can’t find my eyeshadow palette!” Allison shouts down the hallway.

“Sorry, I took that!” Klaus yells back from where he is attempting to shove a hundred days worth of clothing into a single backpack. He’s never exactly been good at packing light, and who knows what they’ll get up to while they’re away? What if it rains? What if it snows? What if he manages to shit himself twice a day every day they’re there? He clearly needs every single item of clothing he owns to be in his backpack right now, but of course, he doesn’t have the power to warp reality and force all that matter into a tiny space.

“Ben, help me,” he whines, despite the fact that Ben also does not possess that power. 

Ben, perched on Klaus’s seldom used desk, snorts a laugh. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, fix it,” Klaus pouts. Ben tilts his head back and raises his shoulders in the now-universal Hargreeves family body language for an eye roll and a sigh. He climbs down soundlessly and crosses to where Klaus has tossed his entire wardrobe onto his unmade bed.

“You don’t need all this,” Ben says. He points at a bright yellow tube top. “That’s awful, burn it immediately.”

“Klaus!” Allison yells from the hallway. “Can I have my makeup back?”

“No!” he responds, knowing full well that she’ll be bursting into the room in less than ten seconds to reclaim the palette by force. Sure enough, the door is thrown open by a very harried Allison within the minute. She stomps across the room and grabs the makeup off the nightstand with an annoyed huff. 

“You’re welcome!” Klaus calls after her retreating back.

“Guys! Five minutes!” Luther yells. Diego screams back for him to fuck off, and Vanya’s laugh can be heard all the way down the hall. It’s simple sibling chaos, plain and ordinary, and it brings a grin to Klaus’s face as he sets about try to cull the amount of clothing he desperately wants to bring on their quick little vacation.

“I mean it!” Luther tries again. “Five minutes and we’re leaving!”

“Sure, buddy,” Klaus shouts.

“No, we really do mean it,” Five says, calmly, at a regular volume. There’s one second of pause before the hallway becomes nothing but a thunderous clatter of footsteps all rushing for the car. Klaus grabs what he can fit in his hands and crams it into the backpack as he runs, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste. 

When Five says they have five minutes,  _ they only have five minutes _ .    
  
  


They make it exactly twelve minutes into the drive before their first disaster strikes. 

“So, I maybe forgot to mention, but I get super motion sick now,” Klaus says, breaking the easy conversation they’d had going. “And I left my dramamine at home.”

“You never used to get motion sick,” Diego says, turning around. He’s in the middle row next to Allison. Klaus is crammed into the backseat between Vanya and Ben, who he insisted on giving the window seat to because, obviously, Ben would appreciate it more, never mind the fact that Ben could just vanish into the great beyond and just reappear when they reach their destination. It’s a family vacation, after all, and the entire family should be together for it, dead or not. 

“It’s the blindness,” Klaus explains. “Since my eyes are fucked up, my brain doesn’t understand what’s going on around it, and I get real sick real quick. So like, either we stop at a pharmacy in the next ten minutes, or shit’s gonna hit the fan.” 

Five loudly says, “For the love of god,” and reaches over to mess around with the dashboard-mounted GPS.

“Don’t bother, there’s a CVS off this exit,” Diego says. Luther obediently puts on his blinker and switches lanes. They’re in the parking lot of the CVS within five minutes, and Klaus has never been so grateful to get out of a car.

“Somebody guide me!” he demands, holding out his arm. Every single one of his siblings bumps into one another in their collective haste to offer an elbow. He ends up with Diego, who he probably trusts the second most, after Vanya, to lead him around properly. Ben’s caught Diego delving into the depths of google dot com several times, always for advice on how best to accommodate a blind friend. It’s weirdly sweet when Diego does something that Klaus just  _ knows _ came straight from some website with a title like Cultural Norms and Pleasantries for Interacting with Persons with Blindness or something. 

“Two steps up,” Diego says, Klaus makes his steps as exaggeratedly huge as possible just to hear his brother sigh. Once they’re inside, Klaus tucks himself slightly behind Diego and lets Diego lead him down the aisles. 

“Dramamine?” Diego asks, stopping in front of a shelf of brightly colored products. From what Klaus can tell, they could be anything from toothbrushes to condoms. 

“Yes, sir,” Klaus replies.

“How many tablets do you want? Is twelve enough?” Diego picks up a bottle and presses it into Klaus’s hand. Klaus gives it a shake and listens to the rattle, turning it over a few times. It feels like it should be enough, especially since he’ll only really need it for the trip there and the ride home.

“Probably. I’m sure they have pharmacies in Washington, DC too.” Klaus grabs at Diego’s elbow again and rattles the pill bottle at him. The sound of the tablets knocking against one another is enough to make him feel a little weird on the inside, but he ignores the strange ghost of longing and shakes it again, for good measure. Fuck addiction. He’s got a support system, and a dead boyfriend he’s still trying to summon. There’s better things to do with his time than mess around with powders and pills.

“Ooh, snacks!” Klaus half-shouts as Diego begins to lead him to the check-out. Diego heaves a dramatic sigh and turns around. They spend several minutes in an aisle full of things Klaus demands to have identified for him while Diego reads the labels with increasing annoyance. It’s halfway through a short debate on whether Twizzlers or Pringles are a more iconic roadtrip food that Diego gets fed up, grabs both, and turns on his heel. He makes it three feet before Klaus’s brain catches up with the situation and spurs his feet into motion. 

“Diego! You betray me!” Klaus whines. “Don’t leave, Diego, I’m helpless!”

“You are not!” Diego fires back. He turns so abruptly that Klaus almost bumps into him. There’s anger in his voice when he continues. “That’s n-not true, not even as a joke. Don’t say it.”

“Ugh, fine,” Klaus mutters, but something in his soul feels simultaneously warmed and exposed by the sentiment. He makes grabby hands at Diego’s arm and grips his brother’s elbow maybe a little too tight for the rest of the CVS excursion.    
  
  


The rest of the drive turns out okay. The dramamine puts Klaus to sleep fairly quickly, and he spends a few half-hour segments of the trip groggy and half awake as his family bickers and sings along to the radio and sits in companionable silence. All in all, it’s a painless drive, and they pull up to the hotel in the late afternoon no worse for wear. 

“How many rooms did you book?” Vanya asks. 

“Well,” Luther says, suddenly very intent on getting a suitcase out of the back of the van. “Actually. Um. About that. The thing is.”

“Luther,” Allison says sternly. She crosses her arms and when Ben whispers to Klaus that she’s raising an eyebrow, he isn’t surprised. 

Very quietly, and very quickly, Luther murmurs, “I could only get one.”

“You  _ what _ ?” Allison demands, shrill over the sudden clamoring of the boys to all shout at their brother at once. It only takes them a split second to transform from a group of polite, if not strange, adults into a band of screaming children, all righteously furious and more than a little bit  _ pissed the fuck off _ . 

“What do you mean you only got one room?” Five demands, slow and smooth, when everyone else calms down.

“Everywhere else was booked by school trips, and this hotel was the only one that had rooms on such short notice. I tried to get three rooms, but they messed up my reservation and by that point, it was too late.” Luther sounds downright miserable. Klaus almost feels sorry for him, but the prospect of having to share a bed with him nips that in the bud real quick.

“So now what?” Allison asks.

“Slumber party?” Vanya says.

“God, this is gonna be miserable,” Diego mutters. “Dibs on sharing a bed with Klaus. No offense, big guy, but I refuse to crawl into bed with you and get smushed.”

“I guess I’ll fit with them. I’ve slept worse places,” Five muses. 

“Vanya and I can share the other,” Allison says. 

“Luther can get a rollaway bed! And Ben doesn’t need to sleep!” Klaus adds brightly, and they all troop into the lobby to check in.    
  
  


It turns out, their room is bigger than they thought. Both beds are king sized, and the room has a pull-out couch, which Luther settles onto with glee. Allison flops dramatically onto the bed nearest the window, and Vanya perches delicately on the edge, so Klaus is pretty sure that it’s been claimed. He drops his backpack onto his own lumpy mattress and settles in. 

“So what’s first?” Luther asks.

“Lunch,” Allison says. “And then we go from there.”

They trek back out into the parking lot, Klaus making an effort to remember the twists and turns in the hallway to reach their room, and load back into the van. Lunch is surprisingly simple. It doesn’t take long to find a little pizza place that Five swears up and down used to be the best pizza in town back in the 80’s, and sure enough, it’s the best pizza Klaus has ever eaten. Luther pays with their father’s black American Express and leaves the waitress a hundred dollar tip. 

They find themselves at the Air and Space Museum, after that. There’s a whole exhibit on the moon, and Luther stares at the room with, according to Ben, such intense longing that Klaus bites the bullet and holds out a hand to take Luther’s massive elbow. 

“So, moon rocks,” Klaus says, and Luther spends the next half hour waxing poetic about soil samples. They have a moon rock on display, but Luther scoffs and mutters about how if they want to see a moon rock, he’ll just pry up the floorboards in their dad’s office and they can all touch one firsthand. After that, Klaus decides that it’s time for Luther to stop dwelling, and drags him toward the most brightly colored huge object he can find.

Said object turns out to be a biplane, and Klaus delights in forcing Luther to read the little placards to him. He hears a lot of information about early advancements in flight and retains maybe eight percent of it, but Ben says it’s helping Luther to stop holding his shoulders so stiffly, so it’s a win. 

“Oh, they have a Cold War exhibition,” Luther says. He leads Klaus over to stand in front of a wall covered in what he says are large photos of old planes. Luther has never been the best at auditory descriptions, but he gives it his best shot, and Klaus trusts Ben to fill in the rest. “They’re organized by what years the military was using them in. Those ones down on the end are older, and the ones way over there are newer.”

“The Cold War was so wild,” Klaus says distantly. “They always tell you that the Cold War itself didn’t involve any actual fighting, but that’s not true at all. We wouldn’t have been in Vietnam if it wasn’t for the fucking nuclear arms race.”

_ Dave _ wouldn’t have been in Vietnam if it wasn’t for the fucking nuclear arms race. He’d have lived a long life, maybe settled down, maybe gotten that farm he was always going on about. He’d have raised a roost of chickens and bought himself an old truck to fix up and done Passover with his mama and her family. He wouldn’t have bled out in Klaus’s arms half a world away from home, covered in dirt and grime and blood, with the ghosts of the recently dead all clamoring to grab a spark of his soul as it lifted from his still-warm corpse.

Klaus shakes off the memory of Dave’s death rattle and pulls himself back to the present, where Luther is giving him a droning lecture on the SR-17 Blackbird.

“They used this one in Vietnam,” Luther says. “They only lost two of them, and neither were in combat.”

“Neat. Hey, let’s go over here,” Klaus says, and takes off. It’s his second less-than-stealthy redirect of the afternoon, but he really doesn’t want to think about Vietnam any more than his nightmares already force him to, so he starts powerwalking toward whatever is on the opposite side of the room.

Luther catches up to him easily, and they spend another half hour blissfully avoiding tough subjects as they wander. Eventually, they run into the girls, and Five and Diego are only a text away. They meet up in the main foyer of the building and lounge on plastic benches, chatting about their next move.

“I think we should go to Ford’s Theatre next,” Vanya says.

“I haven’t been there in a long time,” Five muses.

“When did you go to Ford’s Theatre?” Allison asks.

“Around 1865,” Five says simply, and leaves it at that. 

The group exits the museum and piles into the van. They’re stuck in traffic for half an hour, but Luther puts in a shitty pop CD and it doesn’t take long for the whole family to be belting at the top of their lungs, bopping around in their seats. Even Five bobs his head to the music, though his arms are crossed. 

Ford’s Theatre is an opulent old theater full of red curtains and creaking old chairs. Their tour guide is a peppy young woman with her hair in a massive cloud around her head and bright red lipstick that even Klaus can see. Her name is Tammi-with-an-I and she is just oh so thrilled to meet them.

“So this is the site of the 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln,” she gushes. “Up there in that box with the American flag draped over it is where John Wilkes Booth, a prominent actor of the time, snuck in during a showing of ‘Our American Cousin,’ and fatally shot Lincoln once in the back of the head. We’ll head up there now.”

Tammi leads them up a set of stairs and into the little box, where they have to cram to get a look at what she’s describing. 

“This is where the president would have been seated at the time of the assassination. Booth waited for a loud laugh during the show, and then fired his pistol once before jumping out of the box and onto the stage twelve feet below. If you look closely, you can see the spot where one of his spurs knicked the balcony, leaving a mark to this day.”

“Yep, there’s a knick,” Ben confirms. Klaus nods. He is, to put it simply, bored.

“Maybe he didn’t jump,” Five says. “Maybe he was pushed.”

“Interesting theory!” Tammi says, and hurries them along. While her back is turned, Five leans over to Klaus and whispers, “He was pushed. Guess who did it.”

Klaus laughs at that, and the rest of the tour goes much faster with his deadly time-travelling brother to whisper a firsthand account of the night in his ear. 

“So that concludes our tour!” Tammi finally says. “Thank you, and we hope to see you again!”

“Now where?” Luther asks when they’re all seated in the van again.

“There’s a McDonald’s just down the block,” Allison suggests, which is a mistake, because Klaus is immediately chanting “MCDONALDS! MCDONALDS! MCDONALDS!” at the top of his lungs.

Luther pulls into the drive through, orders one black coffee, and drives them back to the hotel.

They order pizza.    
  
  


The next morning is a godawful bathroom experience, with seven people trying desperately to shower, shave, and brush their teeth all at the exact same time. It’s almost like when they were little, when they shared a bathroom and were forbidden from using any of the fancier, bigger ones in the rest of the house, but worse now that they’re grown up and using flat irons and mascara wands and razors. Now, there are weapons involved.

“I swear to god, Klaus, I will slice both of your ears off if you don’t let me have at least a fraction of the mirror,” Diego threatens, waving around his deadly straight razor. Half his face is covered in shaving cream. The other half is smooth and spotless, not even a single knick.

“But Diego, my eyeliner! I  _ need  _ this mirror!” Klaus shouts. He snags Allison’s expensive fancy eyeliner off the bathroom counter and opens his mouth comically wide as he rings his eyes in a shaky black smudge. He’ll go back through with his finger and smoke it out in a bit. For now, he’s waiting on one of his family members to call him on his bullshit and remember that he doesn’t actually need a mirror. He’s banking on Five realizing first, or maybe Vanya, but either way it’s sure to be hilarious.

“Fuck your eyeliner,” Five snarls. Unlike the rest of the family, he’s not trying to use the mirror for anything at all. He’s simply standing in the bathroom and taking part in the chaos.

“Excuse you!” Klaus says, clapping a hand to his sternum and using his most offended voice. “I am trying to love the body I’m in, Five, and unless you have any better ideas, I will continue using makeup to help aid my self confidence for as long as I wish! The nerve!”

“Oh, fuck off,” Five says derisively. “You can’t even see what you look like, and it’s not like you cared back when you could.”

Diego goes very, very still. “Klaus?”

“Yes, brother mine?” Klaus bats his freshly mascara-ed eyelashes.

“Why do you need the mirror?” Diego’s voice is deadly smooth, like a lake where a monster is lurking right below the surface to drag you down into its cave and drown you the second you break the surface. 

“For old times’ sake,” Klaus says easily. 

He has to duck when the straight razor is flung artfully at his face, and flees the bathroom cackling.

  
  


Their first order of business, after their bathroom chaos session, is to raid the remnants of the hotel’s free continental breakfast. It takes them a minute to find the lobby properly, but when they do, they’re greeted by the sight of what most hotel guests see on a cloudy Wednesday morning: a sad, pathetic excuse for a breakfast, picked over and cold, but still very much free.

“Vanya, get me breakfast,” Klaus says with a wave of his hands. “Eggs, please, or waffles. Turkey bacon only. Also, fresh strawberries, but if you bring a blueberry anywhere near me there will be consequences.”

Vanya sighs and groans dramatically, but Klaus knows it’s good-natured when she says, “Anything else, your highness?”

“Orange juice,” he decides, and settles into a hard-backed folding chair to wait. 

Vanya has only made it a few steps when someone taps Klaus on the shoulder. He jumps and turns around, eyes wide and searching blankly for whoever touched him. The person-shape is beige and wearing khakis and a red hat, but that’s all Klaus can get when he tries to make annoyed eye contact with it.

“Yes?” Klaus asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Son,” the person says, and it’s an old man’s voice. “That is no way to treat a lady.” 

“I’m sorry-- _ what? _ ” Klaus blurts. Oh, this is so not happening.

“Back in my day, we treated our girlfriends with respect,” the old guy admonishes. 

“She is  _ not _ my girlfriend,” Klaus sputters. What the fuck is even with people and assuming they’re all dating each other? Can’t groups of adults hang out without being playing tonsil hockey in their spare time? Have people never heard of siblings before?

“Then that’s one hell of a way to treat your wife, son. Back when I was in the service, they taught us a little thing called  _ respect _ . Frankly, I think you could do with being drafted a time or two.”

Huh. So. That was the wrong thing to say. Klaus feels the blood rush to his face. He can hear Ben begging for him to calm down, but honestly, Klaus has always had a bit of a quick temper, and this is just too much. It’s one thing to assume Vanya is his girlfriend or wife or lover or whatever the fuck. It’s another thing to talk down to a stranger because of the way they tease their sibling--or girlfriend or wife or lover or whatever the fuck. It’s a whole entire different ballgame to look at Klaus, who fought in the Vietnam War and fucking  _ survived  _ it, all while  _ blind _ , and tell him that he knows nothing of respect. Respect is for people who have earned it, and Klaus respects Vanya a hell of a lot. He respects a fucking maggot more than he respects this judgemental stranger.

“Frankly,  _ sir _ , I have been drafted,” Klaus spits. “I’ve seen more combat that I bet you ever have, you old asshole, and I know  _ exactly _ how we talked about women when I was overseas. There was no  _ respect _ when we were dug in, boots full of mud, mosquitoes on every inch of our goddamned filthy skin. There was nothing  _ respectful _ about it. We aimed our guns because we had to and said vile, disgusting things about women because it was the only way to remember what a  _ joke _ felt like and you know what? You know fucking what, asshole? That’s my  _ sister _ . And she’s getting my breakfast because I’m  _ blind.” _

Rant finished, chest heaving, Klaus slams a fist down onto the plastic tabletop. The room around him is silent except for the ringing in his ears. He breathes heavily for a moment before a gentle hand settles on his shoulders. He jumps, skittish, but it’s just Vanya, plate of food in hand.

“Wanna go eat in the room?” she asks softly.

“Yeah,” Klaus spits, standing and grabbing her elbow. “I can’t even see him, and I want this old bastard out of my sight.”

The walk back to the room is silent. When they open the door, they’re greeted by a blue blur, and Five throws himself back onto the bad, cackling louder than Klaus has ever heard him laugh.

“Oh, you got him,” Five half-shouts. “You should have seen the look on that guy’s face. You really got him."

“You really did a number on him,” Ben agrees, laughing.

“Serves him right,” Klaus says brightly. 

They settle in to eat their breakfast and laugh at the old man’s expense. Eventually, the other three join them, and they sit around on their cheap hotel mattresses and plan out the rest of their day. 

“I think today we should see the memorials, while it’s cloudy,” Allison says. “But first I want to take a tour of the Capitol Building. I did some filming there for a movie a while back, but we didn’t get a lot of time to actually see the whole place.”

“That would be fun,” Vanya says. 

“Yeah, we can do that,” Luther agrees, and they load up for Hargreeves Family Vacation: Day Two.    
  
  


The morning passes in a blur of boring tours and droning tour guides. Klaus lets Allison guide him around this time, because she’s most passionate about the artwork in the Capitol Building, and he has to admit she does a good job of describing things. He knows that he wouldn’t really care about the rotunda even if he could see it, but he tries to do a good job of pretending while Allison waxes poetic about gold leaf.

“And that’s a statue of Ulysses S. Grant,” Allison says, pointing at a blob of white. 

Klaus only vaguely knows who that is, and opens his mouth to say so, but finds himself becoming intimately acquainted with the marble floor instead.

“Ow,” he says astutely, peeling his cheek off the floor. He sits up slowly, feeling for bruises, as Allison gasps and flutters her hands over his back and shoulders. He’s not hurt, he doesn’t think, but he’s surprised as all hell.

“Oh god, I’m sorry,” Allison says hurriedly. She gets her hands under his arms and helps him to stand back up. “There was a little step and I forgot to mention it, that’s entirely on me.”

“You’re okay, I’m okay, it’s all good.” Klaus rolls his shoulders and rubs at his neck. He’s never been a huge fan of smacking his jaw directly onto a stone floor, but he has to admit, he’s had worse bumps and bruises. Especially over the past few months.

“God, I’m so bad at this. I knew I should have let Diego do it,” Allison mutters. 

Klaus places his hand back onto her elbow and holds tight. “I wanted you to do it.”

“And look where that got us,” she says with a self-deprecating laugh. “We’re lucky you didn’t break a tooth.”

“Bold of you to assume I still have all my teeth. Anyway, tell me more about Ulrich the Great, or whatever.”

Allison snorts. “Ulysses S. Grant?”

“Yeah, him too,” Klaus says, and continues doing his best to pay attention to Allison and ignore the brand new throbbing in his jaw. It’ll turn purple in the morning, maybe, but he’s got foundation in his bag that he can get Ben to help him with. Allison isn’t great at leading, but he’s also not great at following, so he’s hesitant to blame it entirely on her. 

“Step up,” Ben says, ten minutes later, when it becomes apparent that Allison won’t. Klaus gives him a nod of thanks, and Ben sighs. “She’s not good at this, is she?”

“Nope,” Klaus mutters.

“What?” Allison asks.

“Talking to Ben,” Klaus says easily. 

“Why’d you want her to guide you, anyway? Diego offered. Hell, even Five could have done better, and he sometimes phases through walls instead of telling you to go around them.” Ben makes an annoyed sound when Allison almost forgets to mention a step down, blurting it out at the last second and leaving Klaus to nearly overbalance.

“Practice makes perfect!” Klaus says brightly, to both Allison and Ben. It’s true. Allison isn’t good at thinking about other people because she’s just not used to doing it. All her life, all she had to do was ask for something, and she got it, exactly the way she wanted it. She has a hard time communicating because, unless she’s giving an order or making a demand, her words tend to come out harsh and thoughtless. It’s not entirely her fault, Klaus knows, just like most of the siblings’ hangups aren’t entirely their fault, but she could do with some improvement, and if he has to kiss the cold marble floor a few times, so be it. Allison will learn to function without leaning on her powers to smooth social situations over, come hell or high water. 

While they’re exiting the building, Allison says, “Two small steps down,” and Klaus’s grin is bright enough to light an entire city.   
  
  


The next stop is the World War Two memorial, which Five is downright salivating over. He’s out of the van before Luther has even put it in park. In between one blink and the next, Klaus absolutely loses track of the swiftly retreating blur that is his youngest/oldest brother. 

“So Five’s gone,” Klaus says easily, making grabby hands at Allison until she lets him take her arm. 

“He’ll come back,” she says. Klaus isn’t so sure. Five is a slippery one, especially since he can clip through reality and reappear wherever he wants. He’s always popping in and out with strange excuses and evasive statements, and the family is just now starting to get used to it. It’s easy, after all, to come to terms with the disappearance of a brother over a decade ago, especially in light of everything they’d gone through in the interim. It’s less easy to come to terms with said brother’s reappearance, as a thirteen-year-old who is also fifty-eight, and who likes to swear and threaten passerby.

“So, what kind of hot info do you have about this memorial?” Klaus asks after a moment of walking in pleasant silence. He can hear water, and he’s pretty sure they’re walking on concrete, but other than that, he has nothing. 

“It’s the World War Two memorial,” Allison says, which, yeah, Klaus had gotten that far. “It’s a big fountain surrounded by pillars that represent each of the forty-eight states of the time, as well as the various territories and commonwealths that were under American control, like the Virgin Islands and Guam. We’re gonna take some steps down now.”

Klaus carefully navigates the steps, doing his best to not look like a child learning to walk for the first time, but the entire ground is the same shade of gray and the overcast day isn’t helping him out with any shadows to create contrast. Allison keeps ahold of his hand the entire time and gives it a reassuring squeeze when he’s on steady ground again.

“Can I stick my feet in the water?” he asks. 

Allison laughs. “There are other people doing it, so I guess you can, but it’s definitely rude.”

“I fought for this country, I’ll disrespect national monuments all I like,” Klaus says, already shucking off his tasteful leather boots. He sometimes misses wearing outrageous heels, but he’d rather not trip over something he didn’t see coming and twist an ankle, so he mostly sticks to flats and boots with tasteful heel heights nowadays. Slowly, day by day, Klaus is learning to appreciate a kitten heel. 

As Klaus slips his feet into the blissfully cool water, Allison carefully says, “You never really talk about being in the army.”

All at once, the water on Klaus’s feet is a thick mud, sucking his bare feet deeper and deeper with every step. There’s dirt on his legs and on his face and in his mouth and holy god, he can’t breathe. The sun is beating down on his sunburned skin and the mud is drying in his eyelashes and Klaus wants to die, he wants to die every second of every day, because he ran out of cocaine yesterday and the gunfire won’t stop and Dave is laughing, laughing at some shitty joke about Klaus’s dick or something, but this world is all rain and mosquitoes and mud and screaming, shrieking, bloody ghosts of the newly damned, oh god, oh  _ god _ \--

“Klaus?” Allison asks, and Klaus snaps back to the present, chest heaving, throat dry, eyes wet. 

“Klaus?” Ben parrots, louder, and more distressed.

“Yeah,” he croaks.

“You okay?” she asks. There’s concern lacing her voice, and her hand on his shoulder is gentle. 

“Flashback,” he says simply, and immediately regrets the single word that could tear down his entire world. She’s going to ask questions now, he knows, and as soon as one of his siblings knows something the rest do, and Luther is like a dog with a bone when he thinks someone is keeping a secret. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and then, “Do you want to talk about it?”

And, to Klaus’s surprise, the answer is  _ yes. _

“Yeah, I think--I think I do,” he says. “Um. Can we sit?”

Allison guides him to a bench away from the bulk of the crowd. She takes his hand in hers and points it around the fountain, picking out the location of every one of their siblings, all of whom are out of earshot. When she gives his hand back, Klaus takes a very, very deep breath, and steels his nerve.

“So I was in the army,” he starts, and trails off. It takes a minute to get his train of thought back on the rails. “I was in the army, and I fought a war, and it. It was hell, I guess.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Allison says softly.

“Be glad. I can’t stop imagining it,” Klaus says ruefully. He’s bitter, of course, but who wouldn’t be? He fought a war full of the drafted, men who had been forced into a uniform by a government who didn’t care who lived and who died. Every single one of his brothers in arms would spit into the face of Uncle Sam if they could. None of them should have been there. They should have had wives to dance with and sons to throw a football to and little houses where they would paint their fences white and have Fourth of July barbeques. They should have lived.

Dave should have lived.

“So, you remember how I got kidnapped, back when the world was ending?” he says eventually. Best to tell the whole story. He knows the others probably think he fought somewhere in the Middle East, in the twenty-first century, but nothing is further from the truth. His war stories are an entire different breed. 

So Klaus tells her the whole story. He starts with Hazel and Cha-Cha and takes her through the fiasco with the briefcase. He tells her about appearing in 1969 with no idea of how to get home. He lets her interject with shock and outrage when he tells her that yes, he was handed a gun, and no, they didn’t care that he was blind. Klaus Hargreeves was shit with a gun he couldn’t aim, but he was a warm body with a trigger finger, and most days, that was all that mattered.

“They couldn’t get rid of me, because they needed soldiers,” he says, “But they made sure I knew damn well that they’d drop me down a ravine the second I became too big of a liability.”

“That’s awful,” Allison murmurs. 

Klaus laughs. “Nah, Dave wouldn’t have let them. He liked me too much.”

“Dave?” Allison asks, and Klaus can feel the remembered joy bursting in his chest like a field of wildflowers blooming.

“Dave,” he says dreamily, and rambles on for far too long about the way Dave laughed, the way Dave sang, the way Dave held his hand and made sure he didn’t break a leg on vines and undergrowth. He talks about Dave’s kindness and his quiet strength and they way they’d celebrated a quaint little Passover in the middle of the jungle, just him and Dave and two of the other guys, reciting prayers from memory and laughing when they couldn’t remember what came next and eating whatever they had on hand. He tells Allison about the little farm they were going to get, when the war was over, about the chickens and the goats and the kids Dave wanted to adopt.

“He sounds incredible,” Allison says.

“He was,” Klaus replies. He takes a shaky breath. “And then he died. In my arms.”

He doesn’t go into detail. He doesn’t want to relive it. It’s already in his nightmares enough.

“Oh, Klaus,” Allison murmurs, and pulls him into a hug. He rests his head on her shoulder and tries hard to suppress the stubborn tears that have gathered in his eyes, but it’s no use. Klaus sits there, in the middle of the World War Two memorial, and sobs into his sister’s hair like he’s six years old and their father forgot his name again. Allison pats his hair and lets him.

When Klaus calms down, he opens his eyes to find that a crowd has gathered. His heart skips a beat and panic almost sets in, but he recognizes the hulking outline of Luther’s shoulders, and breathes a sigh of relief.

“It’s just the family,” Ben confirms, voice soft and gentle. He’s talked Klaus through plenty of panic attacks and flashbacks. He knows the tone of voice to soothe, and he knows how to verbally downplay any visual stimuli until it’s no longer a threat, like most things are when Klaus is thinking too hard about what he went through. 

“Hey guys,” he says shakily.

“Are you okay?” Vanya asks, crouching in front of him.

“Yeah, just retelling war stories,” Klaus says, forcing a laugh and getting to his feet. He can feel their worried gazes on him, but Allison must give them a Look or shake her head or something, because they unanimously leave it alone. 

“Want to walk to the Lincoln Memorial?” Five asks, and it’s clear from his tone of voice that he very, very much wants them to all say yes. The kid was always a bit of a history nerd, but now that he’s lived most of it, he’s become even more passionate. He’s got opinions on everything, loud opinions, opinions that often do not take into account morality, reason, or what historians claim to have happened, and he’s got firsthand accounts to back them up.

“Yes, let’s,” Allison says. She takes Klaus’s hand again and gives it a reassuring squeeze. They start walking, trailing behind the rest of the group, and she leans in to whisper, “Thank you.”

“For what?” Klaus sputters. 

“For talking to me,” she replies, and leaves it at that.

“I’m proud of you,” Ben says. “That can’t have been easy, but you did it anyway, and I think you’ll feel better having more confidants.”

“I love you too, Benjamin,” Klaus says, putting every ounce of dramatic flair he possesses into the words, but he means every single one of them. He hopes Ben knows that. 

It’s a short walk up along the Reflection Pool and to the Lincoln Memorial, which Klaus sees as a huge mass of white and which Allison tells him is just that, a huge mass of white. He remembers seeing pictures of it, back when Pogo would do his best to teach them all basic history, but he doesn’t remember being impressed by it. Stairs. Big statue. Cool? Nah.

“How many steps do you think there are?” he asks.

“Too many,” Allison says easily.

“Eighty-seven,” Five replies. “Allison, can I have Klaus?”

“I’m not an object to be bought and sold!” Klaus sputters. 

“I never offered her money. Now come here, I want to talk to you,” Five says. Klaus sighs and stomps his foot dramatically, but he’s genuinely curious about what Five wants to say, so he relinquishes Allison’s arm and grabs ahold of Five’s. Five is short, and Klaus has to bend slightly to really get a grip, but they make it work.

“Start taking steps. They’re wide and short, and I’ll tell you when to stop,” Five instructs him, and starts climbing before Klaus can whine that he would really rather not.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” he asks, after a few stairs. 

“Vietnam,” Five replies. Klaus stumbles a bit but maintains his composure. 

“Vietnam?” he parrots.

“That’s what I said,” Five says harshly, but Klaus knows he doesn’t really mean it. Five is a harsh person. Decades of post-apocalyptic isolation and alcoholism will do that to a guy. “You talked to Allison about it. Good job.”

“She’s easy to talk to,” Klaus says. “I think she just really wants to be a big sister.”

Five sighs. “Either way, I’m proud of you.”

“That what I said!” Ben agrees happily.

“That’s what Ben said,” Klaus relays. “He keeps nagging me to open up, but I don’t know, what’ll happen when I don’t have any more secrets? I’ll lose my cool and alluring aura. How will we go on if that happens?”

“I just don’t know,” Five sighs, going along with the bit. Klaus grins. Five’s sense of humor is dry and mean and absolutely scathing when he wants it to be. He’s fun to riff with.

“You’ll all lose interest in me and dump me back in the gutter where you found me,” Klaus decides. He’s only half joking. He’s had that nightmare before, and while it was a fun break from his other wartorn dreams, it’s not a fun issue to come to terms with. Who would have thought that, on top of everything else, Klaus has abandonment issues?

(Everyone would have thought that.)

“No one is going to abandon you,” Ben reassures him.

“You physically can’t abandon me,” Klaus replies. “We’re tethered, or some shit.”

“Only because I have decided to be.” Ben vanishes in between blinks. Klaus shakes a fist at where his brother’s outline has faded into the background.

“Ben abandoned me to make a point,” he pouts.

“Serves you right,” Five says. “Now, let me tell you about the assassination of President Lincoln.”

So they climb the rest of the steps, legs sore and burning by the time they’re done, and Five regales Klaus with the story of a foggy April night, when Mr. and Mrs. President Abraham Lincoln went out to the theater and changed the course of American history. Five claims to have been in the presidential box with them, and to have thrown John Wilkes Booth over the side of the box and onto the ground, which he states was, in hindsight, not the brightest decision he’s ever made. 

“So now everyone thinks he jumped, when really, I hadn’t loaded my gun just yet and needed him out of the way quickly,” Five says, annoyed. “I was there to try and assassinate one of the performers in the play, but that plan went to shit. So, I improvised.”

“Hell yeah!” Klaus laughs. 

“Sad Abe died, though. I liked him.” Five sighs. “The statue’s a good memorial, but it looks nothing like him. He was much uglier.”

“Jesus, Five, roast him!” Klaus says.

“I’m serious. He wasn’t an attractive man. There’s a reason all of his portraits are from a very specific angle,” Five says. He continues talking about the various diseases Abraham Lincoln might have suffered from, but most of it goes way over Klaus’s head. He’s tired and bored and sure, he’s having a great time bonding with his siblings and getting out of that stuffy old house, but half the shit they’re doing holds little or no interest for him. 

“Are you listening?” Five asks eventually.

Klaus, refusing to be sheepish, says, “Not really.”

“Didn’t think so,” Five mutters. “I think Diego is asleep on a bench over there, and I know Luther is probably bored out of his mind. What do you say we round everyone up and go looking for food?”

“Waffle House,” Klaus replies with a smile, and Five laughs. 

  
  


The dawn of their final vacation day is bright and hot. The sun beats down from a pure azure sky which, according to Ben, is entirely cloudless. Klaus puts on his favorite green skirt and a leather tank top with laces up the sides. Ben tells him he looks ridiculous, so he snags Allison’s expensive eyeshadow and smears some blue around his lids to really bring the look up to par. On his feet go his combat boots, worn and tearing in places but comfy from years of use. When all is said and done, Klaus feels stunning and beautiful, and he’s ready to greet the day with confidence and gusto. He’s gonna need it. 

“You look like you just got out of rehab,” Luther says when Klaus finally exits the bathroom.

Klaus hums contemplatively. “No, Luther, trust me, I know what I look like when I get out of rehab, and this absolutely ain’t it. This, my friend, is simple opulence.”

“It’s certainly something,” Luther replies.

“I think you look good,” Vanya says, coming to the rescue, and Klaus bows deeply in her general direction.   
  
“So, what’s our game plan for our last vacation day?” Diego asks. He’s perched on the bed, fiddling with a knife, or something else shiny. Knowing Diego, it’s almost certainly a knife. Klaus swallows hard and watches the sliver of the blade glint in the morning sunlight. Diego’s expert hands toss the knife in the air, give it artful spins, and bring it safely back to a ready grip, as though he could be on his feet and burying it deep in someone’s ribcage in moments. Klaus watches through the haze of his vision and takes several deep, steadying breaths, focussing on the silver light above all else.

“I want to see the Vietnam memorial,” he says, in words he had practiced in the mirror the night before. His voice doesn’t shake, but his hands do, so he balls them into fists and lets out a shaky laugh. “Or, I guess, not  _ see _ , but you know. Experience.”

“Sounds good to me,” Luther says, so they pack up their suitcases and check out of the hotel. The van is waiting where they left it, and Klaus spends the ride over to the memorial aggressively zoning out and thinking of literally anything else. 

“Who’s got Klaus?” Diego asks when they’re piling out of the van and onto scorching concrete.

“Ben does,” Klaus says. He ignores the little twinge in the back of his head that really doesn’t like being treated like a helpless toddler. He knows it’s because they care, but that doesn’t stop him from secretly resenting it sometimes. It’s nice to be loved. It’s just not nice to be looked after as if he hadn’t been doing just fine on his own for quite some time before the rest of his siblings decided to give being a family a real shot.

“I wish they’d stop treating you like you’re fragile,” Ben says, voice colored with distaste. Klaus hums in agreement.

“Maybe I should get a dog,” he says, just to make Ben laugh.

“That’s the last thing our family needs. They can barely take care of themselves,” Ben says. He starts walking, Klaus trailing a half step behind. Ben is wearing his customary dark leather jacket, which Klaus is grateful for. In the middle of summer, the dark colors and long sleeves stick out like sore thumbs, which makes for easy identification if Ben should step out of his line of sight for more than a moment. He keeps his eyes fixed firmly on Ben’s back as they head forward, toward the still rising sun.

Klaus isn’t sure when he became a morning person. He’s also not sure when he started thinking of himself as a person at all, but it’s nice, he thinks, to not mentally refer to himself as an object at all times. He’s not The Seance and he’s not The Druggie and he’s not The Blind Guy. He’s Klaus, who wears ugly skirts and still tries his best to neatly paint his nails and forces his poor dead brother to narrate reality tv. He’s the middle child in a fucked-up family and he’s an excellent knitter. He’s human. 

He’s going to cry, when he finally finds the name he knows he needs to find. He’s already feeling the tightness in his throat, the pressure behind his eyes. His head is swimming with half-memories and half-dreams. 

“What was Dave’s last name?” Ben asks, gently, shakily.

“Katz,” Klaus says. His voice is steady, but soft, delicate in the morning breeze. He huffs a rueful laugh. “I was going to be Klaus Katz someday.”

“Alliterative,” Ben laughs. He makes some kind of motion like he wishes he could take Klaus’s hand, and not for the first time, Klaus feels the same. His brother, his one true confidant for years, and he can’t even receive a reassuring pat on the back. It does nothing to ease the steadily building flood of emotion.

It takes a few minutes of searching, but eventually Ben stops suddenly, leaning in close to a wall that, according to what Klaus has been told, is inscribed with thousands of names. The wall holds the name of every soldier declared dead during the Vietnam War, as well as everyone declared missing in action. Klaus thinks bitterly that he ought to look for his own name, once he’s done with Dave’s.

“Here it is,” Ben says, placing the tips of his fingers on the wall. “Dave Katz. Killed in action.”

Klaus follows the line of Ben’s arm and with all the gentleness in the world, he lightly rests his hand over Dave’s name. The tears don’t even need the signal to fall. In the blink of an eye, Klaus is sobbing, hand pressed tightly over his mouth to muffle his cries, fingers feeling over the grooves that spell out the name of the love of his life.

He’d thought for sure he’d be swamped with flashbacks the instant they found it. He was wrong. Instead of the smell of blood and the feeling of eternal dirt beneath his feet, all Klaus feels is a bone-deep sense of loss, of sadness, of pure grief. He  _ misses _ Dave, with every fiber of his being, with every atom in every cell in his entire body. He misses his laugh, his raunchy sense of humor, the way he would skate calloused hands over Klaus’s bare shoulderblades as though Klaus were something special, something deserving of such tenderness. He misses Dave describing the sunrise, and holding his hand, and carefully placing a hand on the small of Klaus’s back to guide him. He misses the way Dave never treated him like something broken. He misses the way Dave loved him.

He misses Dave.

In that one moment, all Klaus wants in the entire world is a fucking hug. He turns, impulsively, desperately craving some kind of reassurance, and throws himself into Ben’s arms, intent on burying his face in Ben’s shoulder and getting tears and snot all over that leather jacket.

Ben catches him.

Klaus stays there, stifling sobs into Ben’s jacket, for a good few seconds. Ben rubs a hand down Klaus’s back reassuringly and mumbles things that are probably soothing, if Klaus could stop crying long enough to hear them. They stand, in the middle of a war memorial, and neither of them really realizes what is happening until Klaus pulls back, remembers who he is hugging, and screams, “What the FUCK.”

“What’s wrong?” Ben asks, puzzled, and then, “Oh.”

“Ben?” Klaus says. “Please tell me you’re actually Ben and I wasn’t crying on a stranger.”

“I’m Ben,” Ben says. He holds out his hands in front of him and waves them around. When he goes to stick one through Klaus’s chest, he bumps his knuckles on Klaus’s sternum, and gasps.

“You can touch me,” Klaus says.

“I can touch you,” Ben echoes distantly. 

“Holy shit,” Klaus laughs. 

There’s a clatter of footsteps and Allison’s voice saying, “Klaus, what happened?” but she is cut off by several exclamations, the loudest of which is Luther’s echo of Klaus’s previous statement: “What the FUCK.”

“Ben?” Vanya asks, shaky.

“You can see me,” Ben says. “Can all of you see me?”

“Yes,” Allison says, and she’s definitely crying. “But how?”

“I think… I think it’s Klaus,” Ben declares, which takes Klaus by such surprise that he chokes on his own saliva.

“ _ Me _ ?” Klaus demands.

“Where’d Ben go?” Diego asks, voice hushed.

“He’s still right there,” Klaus says. He waves a hand in Ben’s general direction, but when he goes to put in on Ben’s shoulder, it goes right through. Frowning, Klaus tries again, but all he gets in return is that same shivery tingling feeling he’s always gotten when passing through the incorporeal bodies of the dead and lost. 

“Dammit,” Ben swears.

“Shit, dude,” Klaus laughs. There are still tears streaked down his face, and his voice is shaking, but he’s laughing the lightly hysterical laughter of the intensively relieved. “Did I really do that?”

“I think so,” Ben says. “I’m smiling, by the way.”

Klaus, he finds, is also smiling.   
  
  


They arrive home in the late afternoon, after a long car ride that Klaus slept through most of. The dramamine is still in his system when he stumbles back through the entryway into the dark manor that had been his childhood home, but in his drowsy haze he thinks that it’s lightening up significantly, now that it’s a  _ real  _ home. A home where a family lives.

“Good vacation,” he says distantly, heading directly for the couch. “Lots of fun.”

“Aren’t you going to unpack?” Five says, judgemental. He’s probably going to unpack his entire suitcase before he even takes his shoes off, the nerd.

“Nah. It’s naptime.” Klaus throws himself onto the couch and nestles in. He rolls over, scrunches his limbs in tighter to his body, and says, “Hey, someone toss me a blanket.”

Ben hands him a blanket. When Klaus takes it, he grins. 


End file.
